Wild Flowers Part 24

Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Carolinas, west to Nebraska.

Rich leaf mould, acc.u.mulated between crevices of rock, makes the ideal home of this delicate, yet striking, flower, coa.r.s.e-named, but refined in all its parts. Consistent with the dainty, heart-shaped blossoms that hang trembling along the slender stem like pendants from a lady's ear, are the finely dissected, lace-like leaves, the whole plant repudiating by its femininity its most popular name. It was Th.o.r.eau who observed that only those plants which require but little light, and can stand the drip of trees, prefer to dwell in the woods - plants which have commonly more beauty in their leaves than in their pale and almost colorless blossoms. Certainly few woodland dwellers have more delicately beautiful foliage than the fumitory tribe.

Owing to this flower's early season of bloom and to the depth of its spurs, in which nectar is secreted by two long processes of the middle stamens, only the long-tongued female b.u.mblebees then flying are implied by its curious formation. Two ca.n.a.ls leading to the sweets invite the visitor to thrust in her tongue, and as she hangs from the white heart and presses forward to drain the luscious drops, first on one side, then on the other, her hairy underside necessarily comes in contact with the pollen of younger flowers and - with the later maturing stigmas of older ones, to which she carries it later. But, as might be expected, this intelligent bee occasionally nips holes through the spurs of the flower that makes dining so difficult for her - holes that lesser fry are not slow to investigate.

According to the Rev. Alexander S. Wilson, b.u.mblebees make holes with jagged edges; wasps make clean-cut, circular openings; and the carpenter bees cut slits, through which they steal nectar from deep flowers. Who has tested this statement about the guilty little pilferers on our side of the Atlantic?

SQUIRREL CORN (Bicuculla Canadensis) Poppy family

Flowers - Irregular, greenish white tinged with rose, slightly fragrant, heart-shaped, with 2 short rounded spurs, over 1/2 in.

long, nodding on a slender scape. Calyx of 2 scale-like sepals; corolla heart-shaped at base, consisting of 4 petals in 2 united pairs, a prominent crest on tips of inner ones; 6 stamens in 2 sets; style with 2-lobed stigma. Scape: Smooth, 6 to 12 in. high, the rootstock bearing many small, round, yellow tubers like kernels of corn. Leaves: All from root, delicate, compounded of 3 very finely dissected divisions.

Prferred Habitat - Rich, moist woods.

Flowering Season - May-June.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Virginia, and westward to the Mississippi.

Any one familiar with the Bleeding-heart (B. eximia) of old- fashioned gardens, found growing wild in the Alleghanies, and with the exquisite White Mountain Fringe (Adlumia fungosa) often brought from the woods to be planted over shady trellises, or with the Dutchman's breeches, need not be told that the little squirrel corn is next of kin or far removed from the pink corydalis. It is not until we dig up the plant and look at its roots that we see why it received its name. A delicious perfume like hyacinths, only fainter and subtler, rises from the dainty blossoms.

BULBOUS or SPRING CRESS

(Cardamine bulbosa; C. rhomboidea of Gray) Mustard family

Flowers - White, about 1/2 in. across, cl.u.s.tered in a simple terminal raceme. Calyx of four sepals; corolla of 4 petals in form of a cross; 6 stamens; 1 compound pistil with a 2-lobed style. Stem: 6 to 18 in. high, erect, smooth, from a tuberous base. Leaves: Basal ones rounded, on long petioles; upper leaves oblong or lance-shaped, toothed or entire-edged, short petioled or seated on stem. Fruit: Very slender, erect pods about 1 in.

long, tapering at each end, tipped with a slender style, the stigma prominent; 1 row of seeds in each cell, the pods rapidly following flowers up the stem and opening suddenly.

Preferred Habitat - Wet meadows, low ground, near springs.

Flowering Season - April-June.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to Florida, west to Minnesota and Texas.

Pretty ma.s.ses of this flower, that look like borders of garden candy-tuft planted beside some trickling brook, are visited and cross-fertilized by small bees, of the Andrena and Halictus clans chiefly. How well the b.u.t.terflies understand scientific cla.s.sification with instinct for their sure guide! The caterpillar of that exquisite little white b.u.t.terfly with a dark yellow triangular spot across his wings, the fulcate orange-tip (Euchloe genutia), a first-cousin of the common small white cabbage b.u.t.terfly, feeds on this plant and several of its kin, knowing better than if the books had told it so, that all belong to the same cross-bearing family. The watery, biting juice in the Cruciferae - the radishes, nasturtiums, cabbage, peppergra.s.s, water-cress, mustards, and horseradish - by no means protects them from preying worms and caterpillars; but ants, the worst pilferers of nectar extant, let them alone. Authorities declare that the chloride of pota.s.sium and iodine these plants contain increase their food value to mankind.

The PURPLE CRESS (C. purpurea), formerly counted a mere variety of the preceding, has now been ranked as a distinct species. Its purplish-pink flowers, found about cold, springy places northward, appear two or three weeks earlier than those of the white spring cress. The MEADOW BITTER-CRESS (or CROSS), LADIES' SMOCK, OR CUCKOO-FLOWER (C. pratensis), an immigrant from Europe and Asia now naturalized here north of New Jersey from coast to coast, lifts its larger and more showy white or purplish-pink flowers, that stand well out from the stem on slender pedicels, in loose cl.u.s.ters above watery low-lying ground in April and May.

"Lady-smocks all silver white"

now paint our meadows with delight, as they do Shakespeare's England; but ours have quite frequently a decided pink tinge. The light and graceful growth, and the pinnately divided foliage, give the plant a special charm. In olden times, when it was counted a valuable remedy in hysteria and epilepsy, Linnaeus gave it its generic name Cardamine from two Greek words signifying heart-strengthening.

More bees, flies, b.u.t.terflies, and other insects visit the ladies' smock than perhaps any other crucifer found here, since it has showy flowers and so much nectar the long-persistent sepals require little pouches to hold it. No wonder this plant has triumphantly marched around the world, leaving its relatives that take less pains to woo and work insects far behind in the race. Owing to a partial revolution of the tall stamens away from the stigmas, a visitor in sipping nectar must brush off some pollen on his head or tongue, although in stormy weather, when the movement of the stamens is incomplete, self-pollination may occasionally occur, according to Muller.

TWO-LEAVED TOOTHWORT; CRINKLE-ROOT (Dentaria diphylla) Mustard family

Flowers - White, about 1/2 in. across, in a terminal loose cl.u.s.ter, the formation of each similar to that of bulbous cress.

Stem: 8 to 15 in. high. Root stock: Long, crinkled, toothed, fleshy, crisp, edible. Leaves: 2, opposite or nearly so, on the stem, compounded of 3 ovate and toothed leaflets; also larger, broader leaves on larger petioles from the rootstock. Fruit: Flat, lance-shaped pods, 1 in. long or over, tipped with the slender style.

Perferred Habitat - Rich leaf mould in woods, sometimes in thickets and meadows.

Flowering Season - May.

Distribution - Nova Scotia to the Carolinas, west to the Mississippi.

Cl.u.s.ters of these pretty, white, cross-shaped flowers, found near the bloodroot, claytonia, anemones, and a host of other delicate spring blossoms, enter into a short but fierce compet.i.tion with them for the visits of the small Andrena and Halictus bees then flying to collect nectar and pollen for a generation still unborn. In tunnels underground, or in soft, partially decayed wood, each busy little mother places the pellets of pollen and nectar paste, then when her eggs have been laid on the food supply in separate nurseries and sealed up, she dies from exhaustion, leaving her grub progeny to eat its way through the larva into the chrysalis state, and finally into that of a winged bee that flies away to liberty. These are the little bees so constantly seen about willow catkins.

Country children, on their way to school through the woods, often dig up the curious, long crisp root of the toothwort, which tastes much like the water-cress, to eat with their sandwiches at the noon recess. Then, as they examine the little pointed projections on the rootstock, they see why the plant received its name.

Another toothwort found throughout a similar range, the CUT-LEAVED TOOTHWORT, or PEPPER-ROOT (D. laciniata), has its equally edible rootstock scarcely toothed, but rather constricted in places, giving its little tubers the appearance of beads strung into a necklace. Its white or pale purplish-pink cross-shaped flowers, loosely cl.u.s.tered at the end of an unbranched stem, rise by preference above moist ground in rich woods, often beside a spring, from April to June - a longer season for wooing and working its insect friends than the two-leaved toothwort has attained to - hence it is the commoner plant. Instead of having two leaves on its stem, this species spreads whorls of three leaves, thrice divided, almost to the base, the divisions toothed or lobed, and the side ones sometimes deeply cleft. The larger, longer petioled leaves that rise directly from the rootstock have scarcely developed at flowering time.

SHEPHERD'S PURSE; MOTHER'S HEART (Bursa Bursa-pastoris; Capsella Bursa-pastoris of Gray) Mustard family

Flowers - Small, white, in a long loose raceme, followed by triangular and notched (somewhat heart-shaped) pods, the valves boat-shaped and keeled. Sepals and petals 4; stamens 6; 1 pistil.

Stem: 6 to 18 in. high, from a deep root. Leaves: Forming a rosette at base, 2 to 5 in. long, more or less cut (pinnatifid), a few pointed, arrow-shaped leaves also scattered along stem and partly clasping it.

Preferred Habitat - Fields, roadsides, waste places.

Flowering Season - Almost throughout the year.

Distribution - Over nearly all parts of the earth.

>From Europe this little low plant found its way, to become the commonest of our weeds, so completing its march around the globe.

At a glance one knows it to be related to the alyssum and candy-tuft of our gardens, albeit a poor relation in spite of its vaunted purses - the tiny, heart-shaped seed-pods that so rapidly succeed the flowers. What is the secret of its successful march over the face of the earth? Like the equally triumphant chickweed, it is easily satisfied with unoccupied wasteland, it avoids the fiercest compet.i.tion for insect trade by prolonging its season of bloom far beyond that of any native flower, for there is not a month in the year when one may not find it even in New England in sheltered places. Having vanquished in the fiercer struggle for survival in the Old World, it finds life here one long holiday; and finally, by cl.u.s.tering a large number of relatively small flowers together, it attracts the insects that this method of arrangement pleases best, the flies (Syrphidae and Muscidae) which cross-fertilize it in fine weather, transferring enough pollen from plant to plant to save the species from degeneracy through close inbreeding. However, the long stamens standing on a level with the stigma are well calculated to self-pollenize the flowers, the flies failing them.

VERNAL WHITLOW-GRa.s.s (Draba verna) Mustard family

Flowers - Very small, white, distant, growing on numerous scapes 1 to 5 in. high; in formation each flower is similar to all the mustards, except that the 4 petals are 2-cleft, destroying the cross-like effect. Leaves: 1/2 to 1 in. long, in a tuft or rosette on the ground, oblong or spatulate, covered with stiff hairs.

Preferred Habitat - Waste lands, sandy fields, and roadsides.

Flowering Season - February-May.

Distribution - Throughout our area; naturalized from Europe and Asia.

An insignificantly small plant, too common, however, to be wholly ignored. Although each tiny flower secretes four drops of nectar between the bases of the short stamens and the long ones next them, it would be unreasonable to depend wholly upon insects to carry pollen, since there is so little else to attract them.

Therefore the anthers of the four long stamens regularly shed directly upon the stigma below them, leaving to the few visitors, the small bees chiefly, the transferring from flower to flower of pollen from the two short stamens which must be touched if they would reach the nectar. In spite of the persistency with which these little blossoms fertilize themselves, they certainly increase at a prodigious rate; but how much larger and more beautiful might they not be if they possessed more executive ability

A similar but larger plant, with its hairy leaves not only tufted at the base, but also alternating up the stiff stem, is the HAIRY ROCK-CRESS (Arabis hirsuta), whose white or greenish flowers, growing in racemes after the usual mustard fashion, are quickly followed by very narrow, flattened pods two inches long or less.

Around the world this small traveler has likewise found its way, choosing rocky places to display its insignificant flowers throughout the entire summer to such small bees and flies as seek the nectar in its two tiny glands. It is not to be confused with the saxifrage or stone-breaker.

ROUND-LEAVED SUNDEW; DEW-PLANT (Drosera rotundifolia) Sundew family

Flowers - Small, white, growing in a 1-sided, curved raceme of buds chiefly. Calyx usually 5-parted; usually 5 petals, and as many stamens as petals; usually 3 styles, but 2-cleft, thus appearing to be twice as many. Scape: 4 to 10 in. high. Leaves: Growing in an open rosette on the ground; round or broader, clothed with reddish bristly hairs tipped with purple glands, and narrowed into long, flat, hairy petioles; young leaves curled like fern fronds.

Preferred Habitat - Bogs, sandy and sunny marshes.

Flowering Season - July-August.

Distribution - Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico and westward. From Alaska to California. Europe and Asia.

Here is a bloodthirsty little miscreant that lives by reversing the natural order of higher forms of life preying upon lower ones, an anomaly in that the vegetable actually eats the animal!

The dogbane, as we have seen, simply catches the flies that dare trespa.s.s upon the b.u.t.terflies' preserves, for excellent reasons of its own; the Silenes and phloxes, among others, spread their calices with a sticky gum that acts as limed twigs do to birds, in order to guard the nectar secreted for flying benefactors from pilfering ants; the honey bee being an imported, not a native, insect, and therefore not perfectly adapted to the milkweed, occasionally gets entrapped by it; the big b.u.mblebee is sometimes fatally imprisoned in the moccasin flower's gorgeous tomb - the punishment of insects that do not benefit the flowers is infinite in its variety. But the local Venus's flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), gathered only from the low savannas in North Carolina to entertain the owners of hothouses as it promptly closes the crushing trap at the end of its sensitive leaves over a hapless fly, and the common sundew that tinges the peat-bogs of three continents with its little reddish leaves, belong to a distinct cla.s.s of carnivorous plants which actually masticate their animal food, depending upon it for nourishment as men do upon cattle slaughtered in an abattoir. Darwin's luminous account of these two species alone, which occupies over three hundred absorbingly interesting pages of his "Insectivorous Plants" should be read by everyone interested in these freaks of nature.

When we go to some sunny cranberry bog to look for these sundews, nothing could be more innocent looking than the tiny plant, its nodding raceme of buds, usually with only a solitary little blossom (that opens only in the sunshine) at the top of the curve, its leaves glistening with what looks like dew, though the midsummer sun may be high in the heavens. A little fly or gnat, attracted by the bright jewels, alights on a leaf only to find that the clear drops, more sticky than honey, instantly glue his feet, that the pretty reddish hairs about him act like tentacles, reaching inward, to imprison him within their slowly closing embrace. Here is one of the horrors of the Inquisition operating in this land of liberty before our very eyes! Excited by the struggles of the victim, the sensitive hairs close only the faster, working on the same principle that a vine's tendrils do when they come in contact with a trellis. More of the sticky fluid pours upon the hapless fly, plastering over his legs and wings and the pores on his body through which he draws his breath. Slowly, surely, the leaf rolls inward, making a temporary stomach; the cruel hairs bind, the glue suffocates and holds him fast. Death alone releases him. And now the leafs orgy begins: moistening the fly with a fresh peptic fluid, which helps in the a.s.similation, the plant proceeds to digest its food. Curiously enough, chemical a.n.a.lysis proves that this sundew secretes a complex fluid corresponding almost exactly to the gastric juice in the stomach of animals.

Darwin, who fed these leaves with various articles, found that they could dissolve matter out of pollen, seeds, gra.s.s, etc.; yet without a human caterer, how could a leaf turn vegetarian? When a bit of any undesirable substance, such as chalk or wood, was placed on the hairs and excited them, they might embrace it temporarily; but as soon as the mistake was discovered, it would be dropped! He also poisoned the plants by administering acids, and gave them fatal attacks of indigestion by overfeeding them with bits of raw beef!

Other common sundews, the SPATULATE-LEAVED SUNDEW (D. intermedia) and the THREAD-LEAVED SUNDEW (D. filiformis) whose purplish-pink flowers are reared above wet sand along the coast, possess contrivances similar to the round-leaved plant's to pursue their gruesome business. Why should these vegetables turn carnivorous?

Doubtless because the soil in which they grow can supply little or no nitrogen. Very small roots testify to the small use they serve. The water sucked up through them from the bog aids in the manufacture of the fluid so freely exuded by the bristly glands, but nitrogen must be obtained by other means, even at the sacrifice of insect victims.